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Genetic Engineering, History And Future

Science is a creature that continues to evolve at a much higher rate than the beings that
gave it birth. The transformation time from tree-shrew, to ape, to human far exceeds the time
from analytical engine, to calculator, to computer. But science, in the past, has always remained
distant. It has allowed for advances in production, transportation, and even entertainment, but
never in history will science be able to so deeply affect our lives as genetic engineering will
undoubtedly do. With the birth of this new technology, scientific extremists and anti-technologists
have risen in arms to block its budding future. Spreading fear by misinterpretation
of facts, they promote their hidden agendas in the halls of the United States congress. Genetic
engineering is a safe and powerful tool that will yield unprecedented results, specifically in the
field of medicine. It will usher in a world where gene defects, bacterial disease, and even aging
are a thing of the past. By understanding genetic engineering and its history, discovering its
possibilities, and answering the moral and safety questions it brings forth, the blanket of fear
covering this remarkable technical miracle can be lifted.

The first step to understanding genetic engineering, and embracing its possibilities for
society, is to obtain a rough knowledge base of its history and method. The basis for altering the
evolutionary process is dependent
on the understanding of how individuals pass on
characteristics to their offspring. Genetics achieved its first foothold on the secrets of nature's
evolutionary process when an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel developed the first "laws of
heredity." Using these laws, scientists studied the characteristics of organisms for most of the
next one hundred years following Mendel's discovery. These early studies concluded that each
organism has two sets of character determinants, or genes (Stableford 16). For instance, in...